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Page 16
Americans personally unacquainted with England can form little idea of
the extent to which physical culture is carried here, and the universal
summer madness for athletic sports and out-of-door amusements. The
equable climate, never too hot, never too cold, for river-pull or
cricket, is Albion's advantage in this respect over almost all the rest
of the world, and particularly over our fervid and freezing clime. Even
although this is pious England, where the gin-shops cannot open after
the noon of Sunday until the bells ring for the evening service and
"Pub" and church spring open and alight simultaneously, even in pious
England Sunday is the day of all the week on which the river takes on
its merriest aspect, and from the multitudes of familiar faces and
frequency of friendly greetings reminds one of Regent Street and the
Parks. All prosperous and proper London--the amusement is too costly for
'Arry--seems to float itself upon Thames water that day, coming up forty
land-miles from the metropolis to do so. Boats are furiously in demand,
every picnic nook is pre-empted from earliest morning, the river-side
tea-gardens are thronged, the inns are depleted of men and women in
yachting-costumes, and the locks are jammed as full as they can be of
highly-draped boats, gayly-dressed women, and circus-costumed men, the
whole scene gayer, brighter, more fantastic than any Venetian carnival
since the days of the most sumptuous of the Adriatic doges.
One or two real Venetian gondolas are kept at that river-reach where we
spent our summer. The owner of the principal one is an English nobleman
who lived long in Italy and whose twelve daughters were born there. It
is a sight to see those twelve beautiful sisters, from six years of age
to twenty-four, poled down the river to church every Sunday morning by a
swarthy and veritable Venetian gondolier. Whether or not that
hearse-like craft has sacred associations in the minds of the twelve
maidens all in a row, or whether its grimness and want of swiftness seem
out of place amid the carnival brilliancy of Sunday afternoon, it is
certain that it is never used except for church-going, and the maidens
appear later in the day each in her own swift little canoe, or two or
three sisters together in a larger one, darting to and fro, hither and
yon, with almost incredible swiftness, almost more like winged thoughts
than like even swallows on the wing. The gabled and ivy-wreathed
Elizabethan manor-house which is the summer home of the maidens stands
but a few rods from the river's bank. Here, amidst decorous shrubbery,
upon smooth shaven and rolled turf, where marble vases overflow with
gorgeous flowers, sit Pater and Mater among their dozens of guests. Some
of the gentlemen are in correct morning dress, some in boating-costumes,
and some in that last stage of unclothedness or first of clothedness
which is the English bathing-dress. In their striped tights on land
these last look exactly like saw-dust and rope ring clowns, but when
they dive into the water from that well-bred lawn and dart in wild
pursuit of the maidens, who beat them off with oars from climbing into
the canoes, amid shouts of aquatic and terrestrial laughter, one would
almost swear they were neither the clowns they looked a moment ago, nor
yet the English gentlemen they really are, but fantastic mermen bent
upon carrying earth-brides back with them into their cool native depths
beneath the bright water.
That is what it looks like. But a single glimpse into those cool dappled
depths, where the sunny water is shoal enough to show bottom, reveals,
alas! how little mermaiden and romantic those depths are. For London
does not disport itself every Sunday on the Thames without leaving ample
traces of that disporting. We see those traces gleaming and glooming
there,--empty beer- and wine-bottles, devitalized sardine-boxes, osseous
remains of fish, flesh, and fowl, scooped cheese-rinds, egg-shells, the
buttons of defrauded raiment, and the parted rims of much-snatched-at
and vigorously-squabbled-for straw hats.
A favorite boating-trip is from Teddington up to Oxford, or _vice
versa_, spending a week or two on the way, and stopping at river-side
inns at night. In the season these inns are full to overflowing, and the
roughest and smallest of water-side hamlets holds its accommodations at
lofty premiums. A number of public pleasure-steamers and many private
steam-launches ply up and down, making the whole trip in two or three
days, drawing up at night at towns, and by day provoking curses both
loud and deep by the swash of their tidal waves against the liliputian
navy. Many of the merry boating-parties of men and women seek only
sleeping-accommodations at the inns, and do their own cooking upon bosky
islands, on the wooded or sunny banks of the river, by means of
kerosene- or charcoal-stoves and tiny tents. How appetizingly we have
thus smelt the broiling steak and grilled chop done to a turn even in a
camp frying-pan, as we tramped along the river heights and looked down
upon chatting groups below! How like airs of Araby the Blest the odors
of steaming coffee! how more stimulating than breath of fair Spice Isles
the pungent incense of hissing onions!
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